Using the LANDIS model to evaluate forest harvesting and planting strategies under possible warming climates in Northeastern China

The Small Khingan Mountains in northeastern China provide most of the timber and wood products in the country. Evaluating the long-term effects of harvesting and planting strategies is important especially as the climate changes. In this study, we evaluated the effects of the projected climate warming on potential changes in species’ coverage (percent cover), area harvested (percentage of the study area) and species harvested, using the LANDIS model. Our evaluation was based on the harvest and planting plans specified in Natural Forest Protection Project (NFPP). Our simulated results show that the coverage of southern species such as Korean pine (Pinus koraiensis) and ribbed birch (Betula costata) increases, whereas the coverage of northern species like larch (Larix gmelinii), Kingan fir (Abies nephrolepis), spruces (Picea koraiensis and P. jezoensis) and Dahur birch (Betula davurica) decreases under the warming climate in the region. The species harvested primarily consist of the southern species, especially deciduous species under the warming climate. The warming climate leads to 11.2% increase in area harvested compared to that under the current climate, when planting is not simulated. When planting is simulated, tradeoffs between planting and area harvested are complex. The area harvested only increases in places where moderate planting is implemented, and decreases in places with both low (≤5% area planted) and high (≥30%) planting percentage. This is because when the planting percentage is low, the rate of increase of harvestable species due to planting is lower than the rate of decrease of warming-declining species. When the planting percentage is high, the rate of increase of planted species is higher than the rate of colonization of warming-adapted deciduous species, and the planted species delay the establishment of the warming-adaptable species that have short harvest rotations (due to lower harvestable ages). Our results suggest that the management strategy with planting area of 20% is the best among all the scenarios simulated. Under this warming climate, moderate planting area (e.g. 20%) increases the area harvested to about 43%, which is still less than that (58%) designated in the NFPP. These results have important implications for forest managers designing sustainable forest harvest and reforestation strategies for the landscape under the warming climate.     

Historic and current fire regimes in the Great Xing’an Mountains,northeastern China: Implications for long-term forest management

Understanding both historic and current fire regimes is indispensable to sustainable forest landscape management. In this paper, we use a spatially explicit landscape simulation model, LANDIS, to simulate historic and current fire regimes in the Great Xing’an Mountains, in northeastern China. We analyzed fire frequency, fire size, fire intensity, and spatial pattern of burnt patches. Our simulated results show that fire frequency under the current fire scenario is lower than under the historic fire scenario; total area burnt is larger with lower fire intensity under the historic fire scenario, and smaller with higher fire intensity under the current fire scenario. We also found most areas were burned by high intensity fires under the current fire scenario, but by low to moderate fires under the historic fire scenario. Burnt patches exhibit a different pattern between the two simulation scenarios. Large patches burnt by high intensity class fires dominate the landscape under the current fire scenario, and under historic fire scenario, patches burnt by low to moderate fire intensity fires have relatively larger size than those burnt by high intensity fires. Based on these simulated results, we suggest that prescribed burning or coarse woody debris reduction should be incorporated into forest management plans in this region, especially on north-facing slopes. Tree planting may be a better management option on these severely burned areas whereas prescribed burning after small area selective cutting, retaining dispersed seed trees, may be a sound forest management alternative in areas except for the severely burned patches.     

Human influence on the abundance and connectivity of high-risk fuels in mixed forests of northern Wisconsin,USA

Though fire is considered a natural disturbance, humans heavily influence modern wildfire regimes. Humans influence fires both directly, by igniting and suppressing fires, and indirectly, by either altering vegetation, climate, or both. We used the LANDIS disturbance and succession model to compare the relative importance of a direct human influence (suppression of low intensity surface fires) with an indirect human influence (timber harvest) on the long-term abundance and connectivity of high-risk fuel in a 2791 km² landscape characterized by a mixture of northern hardwood and boreal tree species in northern Wisconsin. High risk fuels were defined as a combination of sites recently disturbed by wind and sites containing conifer species/cohorts that might serve as ladder fuel to carry a surface fire into the canopy. Two levels of surface fire suppression (high/current and low) and three harvest alternatives (no harvest, hardwood emphasis, and pine emphasis) were compared in a 2×3 factorial design using 5 replicated simulations per treatment combination over a 250-year period. Multivariate analysis of variance indicated that the landscape pattern of high-risk fuel (proportion of landscape, mean patch size, nearest neighbor distance, and juxtaposition with non fuel sites) was significantly influenced by both surface fire suppression and by forest harvest (p > 0.0001). However, the two human influences also interacted with each other (p < 0.001), because fire suppression was less likely to influence fuel connectivity when harvest disturbance was simultaneously applied. Temporal patterns observed for each of seven conifer species indicated that disturbances by either fire or harvest encouraged the establishment of moderately shade-tolerant conifer species by disturbing the dominant shade tolerant competitor, sugar maple. Our results conflict with commonly reported relationships between fire suppression and fire risk observed within the interior west of the United States, and illustrate the importance of understanding key interactions between natural disturbance, human disturbance, and successional responses to these disturbance types that will eventually dictate future fire risk.This revised version was published online in May 2005 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Influence of forest planning alternatives on landscape pattern and ecosystem processes in northern Wisconsin,USA

Incorporating an ecosystem management perspective into forest planning requires consideration of the impacts of timber management on a suite of landscape characteristics at broad spatial and long temporal scales. We used the LANDIS forest landscape simulation model to predict forest composition and landscape pattern under seven alternative forest management plans drafted for the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest in Wisconsin. We analyzed 20 response variables representing changes in landscape characteristics that relate to eight timber and wildlife management objectives. A MANOVA showed significant variation in the response variables among the alternative management plans. For most (16 out of 20) response variables, plans ranked either directly or inversely to the extent of even-aged management. The amount of hemlock on the landscape had a surprising positive relationship with even-aged management because hemlock is never cut, even in a clear cut. Our results also show that multiple management objectives can create conflicts related to the amount and arrangement of management activities. For example, American marten and ruffed grouse habitat are maintained by mutually exclusive activities. Our approach demonstrates a way to evaluate alternative management plans and assess if they are likely to meet their stated, multiple objectives.     

Forecasting landscape-scale,cumulative effects of forest management on vegetation and wildlife habitat: A case study of issues,limitations, and opportunities

Forest landscape disturbance and succession models have become practical tools for large-scale, long-term analyses of the cumulative effects of forest management on real landscapes. They can provide essential information in a spatial context to address management and policy issues related to forest planning, wildlife habitat quality, timber harvesting, fire effects, and land use change. Widespread application of landscape disturbance and succession models is hampered by the difficulty of mapping the initial landscape layers needed for model implementation and by the complexity of calibrating forest landscape models for new geographic regions. Applications are complicated by issues of scale related to the size of the landscape of interest (bigger is better), the resolution at which the landscape is modeled and analyzed (finer is better), and the cost or complexity of applying a landscape model (cheaper and easier is better). These issues spill over to associated analyses that build on model outputs or become integrated as auxiliary model capabilities. Continued development and application of forest landscape disturbance and simulation models can be facilitated by (1) cooperative efforts to initialize more and larger landscapes for model applications, (2) partnerships of practitioners and scientists to address current management issues, (3) developing permanent mechanisms for user support, (4) adding new capabilities to models, either directly or as compatible auxiliary models, (5) increasing efforts to evaluate model performance and compare multiple models running on the same landscape, and (6) developing methods to choose among complex, multi-resource alternatives with outputs that vary over space and time.     

Simulating the reciprocal interaction of forest landscape structure and southern pine beetle herbivory using LANDIS

The reciprocal interaction of landscape structure and ecological processes is a cornerstone of modern landscape ecology. We use a simulation model to show how landscape structure and herbivory interact to influence outbreaks of southern pine beetle (Dendroctonus frontalis Zimmermann) in a landscape representative of the southern Appalachian Mountains, USA. We use LANDIS and its biological disturbance agent module to simulate the effects of landscape composition (proportion of landscape in host area) and host aggregation on the size and severity of insect outbreaks and the persistence of the host species, Table Mountain Pine (Pinus pungens Lamb.). We find that landscape composition is less important in the modeled landscapes than host aggregation in structuring the severity of insect outbreaks. Also, simulated southern pine beetle outbreaks over time tend to decrease the aggregation of host species on the landscape by fragmenting large patches into smaller ones, thereby reducing the severity of future outbreaks. Persistence of Table Mountain pine decreases throughout all simulations regardless of landscape structure. The results of this study indicate that when considering alternative restoration strategies for insect-affected landscapes, it is necessary to consider the patterns of hosts on the landscape as well as the landscape composition.     

黄土区小流域植被演替空间的直观模拟

 现代流域管理和森林经营管理都要求对流域内以植被为主要类型的景观进行分析,并实现对流域植被未来演替格局的模拟预测。应用LANDIS景观模型对黄土区小流域次生林进行未来500 a的演替格局模拟,结果表明:油松是针叶树中的优势种,辽东栎是阔叶树中的优势种;油松在研究区内分布面积最大的时间保持430 a,辽东栎分布面积最大的时间保持70 a;阔叶树种相对聚集度指数的变化幅度大于针叶树种;随着模拟年代的推衍,树种年龄结构发生显著变化,呈现出复杂多样的异龄林空间分布格局。     

大兴安岭森林景观在不同火干扰及人工更新下的演替动态

该文应用LANDIS模拟大兴安岭图强林业局森林景观1987年特大火灾后,在不同的火干扰条件（不模拟火、火烧轮回期为150年和325年）和不同人工更新方式（完全自然更新、种植落叶松和种植樟子松）,3×3种（共9种）模拟方案下300年的动态变化.研究结果表明:火烧轮回期为150年条件下的火烧明显比火烧轮回期为325年方案下的火烧频繁,总的过火面积也多,但前者以轻度火为主,后者以重度火为主.而人工更新下（无论是种植落叶松还是种植樟子松）过火面积要高于自然更新下的过火面积.造林树种的不同对火也有较大的影响,种植樟子松方案下的过火面积相对较大.不同火干扰条件不仅会影响森林主要物种组成面积,而且还会造成其年龄结构的巨大差异.一般而言,火烧轮回期长有利于低耐火性物种,火烧轮回期短有利于高耐火性物种.但如果物种具有很强的种子扩散和定居更新能力,无论该物种的耐火性高还是低,火烧轮回期短则更利于该物种的生存,但幼龄林所占的比重较大.不同的种植更新方案对于森林物种有显著的影响,可以明显地增加所种植的物种在该区所占的比例.      

Long-term oscillation of drought conditions in the western China:an analysis of PDSI on a decadal scale

Water resource availability is one of the primary limiting factors with regard to ecosystems in the western China.Having a clear understanding of multi-scale drought patterns in this region is a key step for adaption and mitigation to climate change.The Palmer drought severity index(PDSI) is a widely applied index to assess drought conditions.In this study,long-term monthly self-calibrated PDSI data from 1951 to 2012 were examined for drought spatiotemporal variations in the western China.The results clearly indicated that apparent spatial heterogeneities were evidenced between two sub-regions(arid land with annual precipitation less than 200 mm and semiarid land with annual precipitation between 200 to 500 mm) as well as in the entire region of the western China.Ensemble empirical mode decomposition(EEMD) analyses on monthly PDSI and other atmospheric variable time-series obtained from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering,Princeton University revealed that all monthly time-series of variables could be completely decomposed into eight intrinsic mode functions(IMFs) and a trend(residual).This indicates that the monthly PDSI and atmospheric variables of the semiarid area in the western China contain eight quasi-period oscillations on various timescale spanning,seasonal to decadal cycles and a trend of a larger timescale from 1951–2012.The multi-scale drought patterns identified in this research could be powerful supports for decision-making regarding coping with droughts in this region.     

Influence of forest management alternatives and land type on susceptibility to fire in northern Wisconsin,USA

We used the LANDIS disturbance and succession model to study the effects of six alternative vegetation management scenarios on forest succession and the subsequent risk of canopy fire on a 2791 km² landscape in northern Wisconsin, USA. The study area is a mix of fire-prone and fire-resistant land types. The alternatives vary the spatial distribution of vegetation management activities to meet objectives primarily related to forest composition and recreation. The model simulates the spatial dynamics of differential reproduction, dispersal, and succession patterns using the vital attributes of species as they are influenced by the abiotic environment and disturbance. We simulated 50 replicates of each management alternative and recorded the presence of species age cohorts capable of sustaining canopy fire and the occurrence of fire over 250 years. We combined these maps of fuel and fire to map the probability of canopy fires across replicates for each alternative. Canopy fire probability varied considerably by land type. There was also a subtle, but significant effect of management alternative, and there was a significant interaction between land type and management alternative. The species associated with high-risk fuels (conifers) tend to be favored by management alternatives with more disturbances, whereas low disturbance levels favor low-risk northern hardwood systems dominated by sugar maple. The effect of management alternative on fire risk to individual human communities was not consistent across the landscape. Our results highlight the value of the LANDIS model for identifying specific locations where interacting factors of land type and management strategy increase fire risk.This revised version was published online in May 2005 with corrections to the Cover Date.